As far as I could perceive, the _Welch_ People love Holiday Fingers, and care not much for encumbring them with that Inconvenience call’d Work. They can (Shepherd like) loll upon a Crook pretty handsomely in the Field, and can discharge a Superintendency over the Goats. They are most accomplish’d Drovers, to which laudable Function they are so naturally prone, that they are apt to drive sometimes more than their own. They are much addicted to the Sin of Nastiness, wallowing in Filthiness like so many Swine; so that the whole Nation seems but a general Sty. The meaner Sort of Women are generally such draggle Tails, that the Cattle in their Bosoms are quag-mir’d in the Filth of their well-gleb’d Attire; so that the frisking Fleas are so far from _Levalto_’s, that I was verily persuaded they can scarce pull out _Proboscis_, and their Feet from the Bogs. The Tenements they live in are suitable to the Guests that possess them; for as these seem to be Dirt moulded into Men, so those are the same Matter kneaded into Houses; they are usually very humble Cottages, and low in Stature, so that a Man may ride upon the Ridge, and yet have his Legs hang in the Diet. I was not so vain as to expect very splendid Furniture in such contemptible Huts; but I soon perceiv’d what Utensils were most necessary, a Dish-Clout and a Besom, and such cleansing Implements are very proper to correct the Filthiness of their Mansions. I found no Apartments in these their Habitations, every Edifice being a _Noah_’s Ark, where a promiscuous Family, a miscellaneous Heap of all Kind of Creatures did converse together in one Room; the Pigs and the Pullen, and other Brutes either truckling under, or lying at the Bed’s-Feet of the little more refin’d, yet their Brother Animals.
But that which I admir’d most of all amongst them, was the Virginity of their Language, not deflowerd by the Mixture of any other Dialect. The Purity of the _Latin_ was debauch’d by the _Vandals_, and hunn’d into Corruption by that barbarous People; but the Sincerity of the _British_ Tongue remains inviolable. ’Tis a Tongue (it seems) not made for every Mouth, as appears by an _English_ Gentleman one Day in my Company, who having got a _Welsh_ Polysyllable into his Throat, was almost choak’d with Consonants, had I not, by clapping him on the Back, made him disgorge a Guttural or two, and so sav’d him. Whether the _Welsh_ Tongue be a Splinter of that universal one that was shatter’d at _Babel_, I have some Reason to doubt, in Regard ’tis unlike the Dialects that were crumbled there. However, ’tis now cashir’d out of Gentlemen’s Houses, there being scarcely to be heard even one single _Welsh_ Tone in many Families; for their Children are instructed in the _Anglican_ Idiom, and their Schools are pædagogu’d with Professors of the same; so that (if the Stars prove lucky) there may be some glimmering Hopes that the _British_ Tongue may be quite extinct, and may be _English’d_ out of _Wales_, as _Latin_ was barbarously _Goth’d_ out of _Italy_.